The Pursuit of Love
Now a major series on BBC and Prime Video directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James and Andrew Scott
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3.8 • 13 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
One of the funniest, sharpest novels about love and growing up ever written, Nancy Mitford's classic is now a major BBC and Prime Video series directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James, Andrew Scott and Dominic West
'He was the great love of her life you know.'
'Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly, 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.'
Oh, the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the lookout for the perfect lover.
But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters had thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humourless communist, before finding real love in war-torn Paris . . .
NANCY MITFORD'S WICKEDLY FUNNY SERIES CONTINUES IN LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE AND DON'T TELL ALFRED.
*****
'Utter, utter bliss' Daily Mail
'A pleasure as intense as inheriting a perfect pearl necklace, or finding a silk dress in a vintage shop that fits like a glove' Caitlin Moran, Harper's Bazaar
'Peerless' Zoe Heller
Customer Reviews
Amazon not so original streaming now
The author was British (she died in 1973), the oldest of the six daughters of a minor member of the English aristocracy. (There was a son too.) The Mitford girls were the “it girls” of inter-war Britain. Like the Kardashians but with less lip gloss and filler, and more fox hunting. Nancy made her name as a novelist for this and the follow up Love in a Cold Climate (1947) then turned her hand to non-fiction, specifically history.
This is a semi-autobiographical account of growing up as a privileged offspring in a big house in rural Gloucestershire. Think Upstairs/Downstairs from the upstairs perspective rather than the downstairs one, or a much funnier version of Downton Abbey. By funnier, I mean screamingly so. From now to my dying day, I think I will laugh out loud when I hear or read the words “entrenching tool, ” and if foxes were thin on the ground, the old man sets the dogs after his younger daughters. I suspect the Monty Python team got a few ideas from Ms Mitford. There’s serious stuff too: failed love affairs/marriages, politics, wars (Spanish Civil and WW2), tragic losses, the whole shebang before everyone cycles back to the big house..
The prose is delicious, particularly in the audio version. It came as no surprise when I learned Ms M maintained a vigorous correspondence with one E Waugh (no relation to Steve and Mark) throughout her life.